


Thought We Built a Dynasty That Heaven Couldn't Shake

by Aylarain



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Season 3, Sick Character, maybe more hurt than comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28182210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aylarain/pseuds/Aylarain
Summary: He spends most of his days abed now. Saving his strength for the few public appearances he must make. She had hope for years when he could still hold her weight in his arms. Gown rucked up so she could take him with her legs wrapped around his waist. Months even, when he could still brace himself above her in bed.
Relationships: Mary Stuart/Francis de Valois (Reign)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Thought We Built a Dynasty That Heaven Couldn't Shake

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song Dynasty by MIIA.
> 
> I apologize in advance for my absolute abuse of italics.

_Rise._

_Fall._

_Rise._

_Fall._

His chest moves steadily beneath her ear as he slumbers in an exhausted sleep. 

It was not a good day. 

Mary entered his chambers mid-morning to find the royal physician with a surgeon and his assistants scurrying about the room. Francis pale and shaking, knelt in the middle of the bed with his fists clenched to his temples. Knuckles white. _“M-M-Mary,”_ he stuttered between gritted teeth at the sight of her. Blood spattered across the pillows, the shoulder of his nightshirt. His curls matted, tinged in red. The air fetid with iron and sick and sweat. 

_“GET OUT!”_ Mary shouted, her royal grace and eloquence abandoned in the face of her husband’s distress. 

The specifics of the treatment are unknown to her, but they will not be serving His Grace again.

Mary hikes up her heavy skirts, crawling across the bed on her knees to his side where Francis falls against her, curling his body around her. Francis is panting and trembling in her arms and this is nothing like before. Before when he lay still and quiet in his sickbed. Mary cradles his head to her breast, hands tenderly caressing his damp curls. His tears stain her silks. His clothes soaked through with sweat. She hums and hushes him with her mouth pressed to his crown and watches the color return to his hands slowly unclenching in the folds of her gown. 

She wants to lash out and unleash this rage that sometimes steals her breath and makes her skin feel too tight everytime she is faced with the unyielding evidence that he _is_ dying. 

But there will be time enough once he's gone to give into her fury. A lifetime.

"Breathe with me Francis," she says, holding his palm flat to her chest. She lets a little royal command bleed into it. Francis the man might be breaking, but the King could never allow such weakness. 

For how long she holds him, she could not say, but eventually Francis calms and Mary allows only her ladies in to attend them. 

He dozes against her on a chaise while the bed linens are changed and vomit is scrubbed from the carpets. Methodically, they assist her in wiping down his body. Francis gazes up at her through half lidded eyes as his hair is rinsed clean. Once he's dressed in clean garments they help her settle him into bed.

Mary coaxes him into taking a little of the pain relieving tincture. He mostly refuses the sleeping tonics and pain relieving agents the physicians leave. Says they muddle his mind and he doesn’t want to sleep away the rest of his days. 

This day has been too hard already and they both need a reprieve from his suffering.

Mary dismisses her ladies after they help her remove everything down to her underclothes. She crawls slowly and carefully up beside him, lifting his arm to pull it around her shoulders. She gently arranges herself against his side with her head on his chest, lying awake to the rhythm of his still beating heart.

This moment will cost him when he wakes. Francis has tried so valiantly to shelter her from the worst of it.

But Mary catches the grimaces, the moments his guard falls against his will. When he sways slightly at her side and she has to press herself against him for support. There are times when his arm tightens around her waist and she feels him breathe heavily into her hair as he struggles to maintain his composure. 

In their bed, Francis is a solid weight beside her. His hip pressing into her abdomen. Mary lightly tugs an errant curl to watch it spring back in place. She skims her toes up and down his calf. Let’s her hands map across his skin while he rests soundly in a poppy induced sleep.  
  


_"You will not have the King of France"_ will be a promise he cannot break.  
  


They spend an entire afternoon lying on a divan in front of the window, soaking in the sun with Francis wrapped in a blanket sprawled across her lap. Mary kneading her fingers into his shoulders, massaging circles into his temples. It's a quiet day with most of their official responsibilities passed off to others.

“I have to entrust you to another and I only hope they do better by you than me,” he says, not quite looking at her, face turned into her stomach.

“Francis _no._ "

His hand curls over her ribs, thumb passing back and forth over the linen of her shift. 

“You are going to be a beautiful mother one day,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to her belly. 

“I regret that I will not be here,” he says, raising himself up on his knees to press his brow to hers, “physically by your side.” 

His hands cup her cheeks and Mary stares into clear Valois blue eyes.

"But I will _always_ be with you Mary.”  
  


It’s always been Francis.  
  


He spends most of his days abed now. Saving his strength for the few public appearances he must make. She had hope for years when he could still hold her weight in his arms. Gown rucked up so she could take him with her legs wrapped around his waist. Months even, when he could still brace himself above her in bed.

Mary the devout Catholic dutifully prays for God to watch over her husband. She recites the prayers along every bead of her Rosary that God may accept His loyal servant into the holy kingdom of Heaven.

Mary the wife hurries from the chapel after her final _Amen_ to make sure God has not.

_“I want to dance with you"_ is a good memory he's leaving her with. The span of his hands on her waist. The slide of his body against hers. Francis, still tall and graceful as ever beside her. He cannot spin her in dizzying circles like before, but he follows her lead leaving her breathless all the same. 

It is a conscious effort to drown out the relentless litany of _"I am dying"_ with the swish of her skirts and the quartet strings. 

He is weakening day by day. Falling more heavily into bed after even the shortest excursion. Francis isn’t so much living now as he is surviving one more day after day after day. It was somehow easier when she thought he might die on a battlefield. Far away in Calais. Easier than this slow march towards death even as she lies next to him soaking in his warmth.

Mary has seen his death play out against the back of her eyelids. A collapse in the hall. In bed with a chest that ceases to rise. Physicians, their tools and too much blood. Mary’s unforgiving mind has been able to vividly conjure up the image of his body lying forever still, interred in marble and stone.  
  


Their time together is counting down in days.  
  


One night she pulls her nightdress over her head and settles herself astride his lap. It isn't her favorite position to be with him. Mary’s always preferred the weight of him pressing her into the mattress. His curls a halo hanging about his face.

"Mary, I can't," he says. His protest in direct contrast with his hands palming her rear to pull her more firmly against him.

"But I can. Allow me this Francis... _please_." 

Mary doesn't waste his energy trying to get him naked. It's enough to push the covers aside and tug his nightshirt up to his waist. She squeezes his hips between her thighs and grinds down against his bare skin. 

Mary watches the subtle shifts in his countenance as he gathers his bearings. His consent is a whispered, "There's nothing I would deny my wife," against her lips. 

_Only his life_ \- The thought is bitter and it doesn't belong here tonight. 

He guides her hands to him. It's only a few strokes over his length before he's ready for her. She eases herself down slowly, curling her fingers into his bedclothes. If Mary takes a beat longer than normal before she moves, they both know why and it’s nothing that needs to be said.

He might not be able to move much beneath her, but his hands never stop moving against her skin. They skim her sides, brush against her breasts, tangle in her hair to pull just a little. Even now Francis could never be a passive lover. He still kisses like he wants to consume her, even if he has to break away sooner. 

"You're gorgeous like this," he says. Francis stares up at her in awe when she uses her fingers in time with the rolling of her hips to get herself off. 

Mary's always thought him the beautiful one. 

When her movements slow and her breath is steady, Francis pulls her down flush to his chest, hands caressing in lazy circles against the bare skin of her back. Mary presses her face tight against his neck and grieves just a little that he couldn’t finish. She feels the press of his mouth to her hair right before his arms go lax around her body as he drifts off to sleep. 

There aren't any sobs left to accompany her tears and she wouldn’t want him to hear them anyway.  
  
__

_“I would give anything to spend my life, however long, at your side."_  
  


His hand shakes lifting the wine goblet to his lips and Mary rushes to catch it discreetly before it spills on the table in front of their dining companions.

Mary remembers how he gripped her wrists held over her head as he sucked marks over her collarbones.

He can do little more than caress her skin in soothing passes that she suspects are as much to comfort himself as her.

Mary remembers his knuckles brushing the skin of her back as he untied her stays. The way his mouth would follow pressing along her spine. 

He vomits when the pain overwhelms him and his skin is clammy, hair tangled from sweat and his valet's efforts to hold it back for him. 

Mary remembers his curls tickling the sensitive skin of her belly. 

“I just want more time with you,” he says with sad resignation. 

Mary remembers, _“Vigorous,”_ and the accompanied spark in his eye. His enthusiastic demonstration when he ducked beneath her skirts. 

She crawls into bed with him still dressed in her gown. Francis having reached his limit is unable to free her laces and Mary is unwilling to call anyone in that would intrude upon her scant time alone with him.

Mary remembers deft fingers untying the ribbons on her stockings. His kisses, feather light, on the inside of her knees.

The night before when his breathing was so shallow she hovered her hand in front of his face to make sure he still was.

Mary remembers his head settled down between her thighs, a rush of warm breath right before his mouth on her.  
  


How dreadfully short _however long_ turned out to be.  
  


Mary would wage war for him. She would ride across battlefields to reach him.

Mary’s crown did not arm her with a weapon to wield against this.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
